TOW #28 Reflection

During the TOW cycles, I have noticed myself progressively moving away from using pathos, logos, and ethos as devices on their own. Instead, I have gotten better at explaining how different devices affect these points without explicitly mentioning them. This assignment really helped break me out of that mindset from the beginning of the year. I also tried to choose different kinds of texts to help prepare for the exam. I read essays, articles, and reviews, watched commercials, and looked at ads. I did sometimes try to find texts about topics I have little to no interest in so I could also be ready in that sense.

                While I paid attention to these things, I do feel like my organization was often lacking. A lot of the time, I was not pre-writing or even thinking about how to organize my analysis. I would just try to get what I had to say written, and because of this, the ideas did not flow as well as they could have. However, the TOW assignment made the analysis part of the AP exam easier and more natural. It made me that much more confident going into it knowing that I had been analyzing text for the whole year, and not just at the beginning. These posts have definitely served their purpose.

TOW #27 "Lost and Found" (written)

Lost and Found by Colson Whitehead is a short memoir about living in New York City, New York, and being a New Yorker. "History books and public television documentaries are always trying to tell you all sorts of facts about New York. That Canal Street used to be a canal. That Bryant Park used to be a reservoir" (para. 5). Whitehead argues that these are not things you need to know about New York City, and also may or may not be true at all. The overall tone is fairly casual and uses slang, contractions, and the voice comes across as very "New York" to the reader. It also seems a bit instructional to the reader because the author uses second person and seems to be talking to the audience, and almost directing them through a day in the Big Apple. The sentences are mainly kept on the shorter side making it seem more conversational as well. Very few of them are longer than 10 or so words. Whitehead also includes little moments of dialogue into the memoir. At the start, it had seemed the author held a negative light towards the grand city and was going to end up trashing it throughout the memoir. However, instead, int he end the author finishes up with the feeling of pride for ones own city, and even all of its little flaws.

TOW #26 "Fried Chicken"(visual ad)

In this image it shows a baby chick standing in a fry basket over a fast food fryer, and asks a thought provoking question: would you boil a chicken alive? Now, this may seem a bit hasty or out of the blue to ask such a question outright. This is an ad that is meant to convince people to “go vegan today” as it says. The small amount of text on it explains how in some chicken slaughterhouses, the chickens are decapitated and thrown in the boiling water meant to remove their feathers while they are still conscious. This would be effective to shock the audience and cause them to at least re-think their chicken eating habits—if only it had not started out with a very clear logical fallacy. “If you eat chicken, you are paying someone to engage in cruelty similar to dropping this little fellow into a vat of hot oil,” is a bit of a mix between a faulty analogy, hasty generalization, and a slippery slope fallacy. This ad is making it seem as if all places do this, and every chicken is treated cruelly like that, which is incorrect. Not to mention, at the same time, the ad is almost being accusatory towards the audience by turning them into the villain, which, in most cases, only ends with denial and not persuasion. Aesthetically, the text parts have been kept simple in a two-toned pallet. On the other hand, the actual image quality is fairly unpleasing and unprofessional. It looks almost as if it was taken from a post anybody made on the internet, and turned into a pro-vegan ad. This ad has very little visual appeal or any major eye drawing points other than the fact that the chick is in a fryer. If they were aiming to shock their audience, they may benefit better from a more morbid take on the situation. As it is now, the effectiveness is going down the drain.

TOW #25 "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" (article)

                The title of this prose is more or less self-explanatory. It is about the most amazing bowling story ever. It starts out with a narrative description of a competitive bowler by the name of Bill Fong executing a perfect—or to him, near perfect—strike. The author, Michael J. Mooney, uses descriptive language and imagery to his advantage to describe the short moment. He also notably compares a human’s desired efficiency to that of a robot. He then proceeds to inform the audience that bowling a perfect 300, or twelve strikes in a row, is not the best one can do. The best, in fact, would be bowling a 900, 36 strikes in a row, since bowling is played in three rounds. Apparently, there have only ever been 21 people ever to achieve this on record. This article tells the story of a time when Bill Fong almost made that number 22. Mooney’s use of descriptive language throughout creates a suspenseful mood and makes the reader really feel like they are watching ever little fleeting moment and movement of the scene being described. The article then goes through a biographical section that talks about Fong’s life a bit more in depth. This then leads back to the narrative of Fong bowling. Normally, an interruption of this sort would seem abrupt and ill placed, but Mooney does well to make it seem more blended together and less jumpy. Overall, the narrative sections do well to attract the reader and would make any sport, even bowling, appear to be incredibly intense.

TOW #24 "Greek Religion" (IRB- 2nd half)

                In this book on the religious stories and figures in Greek mythology, the author explores different stories and tales that have influenced and expanded the Greek religion. Rather than sticking to the ones everyone naturally already know about, they used ones many have not even heard of very often to give more to the topic.  I have always been interested in Greek mythology and this seems like a great way to find out and hear stories I cannot find on Wikipedia. This book may also expand my mind on topics within Greek mythology and religion. I only have a general knowledge of certain gods, goddesses, and events, and I would love to know more. There are going to be many topics in this book that I have never even heard of, I can tell just from looking in the table of contents. It helps achieve his purpose since he is proving that there is more to Greek religion than most know, because he is using stories that many average readers may not be familiar with even if they thought they were someone that knew a lot about the Greek religion beforehand. I have learned new stories and new figures in Greek mythology and religion through this novel.

TOW #23 "Not Nothing'" (written)

                In this short essay by Stephen Cave, the concept of the daily balance of life and death are contemplated. Cave begins with a narrative section in which he describes a time when he accidentally killed a fly. He then addresses the fact that the audiences’ opinions of him at the time are most likely divided between those who think the death was insignificant, and those who think of him as a murderer. In another narrative section, Cave mentions the life cycle of frogs from the time they are eggs, to tadpoles, to finally frogs, and how the many deaths along the way are necessary for any pond’s life to flourish. I do not think he is trying to prove that death or life are good or bad, but he is trying to qualify that both are necessary and “are obligate symbionts, each wholly dependent on the other,” (paragraph 8). Cave then goes to addresses the ideas of Veganism and how it is very anti-death, as well as him not being the only person to feel negatively about the death of a fly and write about it. He uses the example of a poet by the name of William Blake and his short poem that sprung from a time when he too killed a fly by accident. This shows that the feelings of empathy occasionally associated with the unintentional killing of a popularly thought insignificant creature is not uncommon.

TOW #22 "Pope Francis Recalls..." (article)

                 In this article from The Onion, the author recounts how Pope Francis recalls the vast differences between his current job and his old ones when he was just starting out as a recently ordained member of the clergy. According to Francis, shortly after he started attempting to shepherd the faithful, he gave himself a five-year deadline to either become the pastor of his own parish or pack it in and get a real job. Recalling his early struggles, the Vicar of Christ admitted he was living mass to mass for several years. This article’s use of casual language and a few obscenities give a feeling of—well, just that—being casual. For example, even the caption under the image at the top of the article says “Francis says his current gig is a far cry from his early days, when he spent weeks on the road performing sacraments at a different piece-of-sh~t chapel each night.” The same profanity is even used in the article’s title, though, this sort of thing is just The Onion’s style. Francis added that he gets pretty embarrassed now when he thinks back on some of his “terrible” early material on the Holy Trinity and the Kingdom of God. The point just goes to show that even someone who started out small and average, can become someone known all over the world.